I Lay Now In My Mother's Bed
Chloe Aiko Stark
I missed caring for what others have created. I almost finished watching a television series last night, so towards the last ten minutes of the program, when the characters got to tying up their loose ends, I was suddenly worried that the show might end. I couldn’t bring myself to watch the rest of it, and I still am not curious to know anything more.
I think the meds might be warping time. It is only eleven in the morning, and I am getting ready to go to work. I section off the front pieces on both sides of my head to braid them, and put them into a ponytail. I braid the ponytail and let it fall heavy down the middle of my back. The braid hurts by hour six or so, but I don’t feel like changing how I do myself up. For a moment, I get this pang of worry that it is late in the day, maybe five o’clock in the evening, and I’m running really late. Anyways, I am convinced that it is close to nighttime, whatever that may mean for me. It isn’t just that I feel as though I’ve been awake for very long, because I haven’t been, I’ve only been up for maybe two hours. Maybe I’ve done a lot in the meantime, like check the stove for forty minutes. I feel as though the sun would have already set if I stepped outside just then, but it couldn’t have. It’s only eleven in the morning.
I lay now in my mother’s bed. I like it for how big it is, maybe because it reminds me of the one we used to share when I didn’t have a place for myself. My own room isn’t one that I often spend time in, not like I had when the world came to an end. I used to sit in its framed corners with a cup of something on the ledge, telling stories. I never really believed in any of them, and yet, I told them as if they were important. I told them as if they were any more important to me than some of the dreams that I tend to recall on days when I feel that I have already lived them, though I cannot tell time, especially now. Sometimes, I can almost convince myself that I hadn’t even woken from them at all. I feel now almost like I’m on the cusp of genuine illness when I see the house that dwells high on the peninsula, and that hides dusk as the sun sets before I can remember to make myself something for dinner, and so I lay in bed.